Chicken Casserole, Mrs. Corneal J. Mack
The Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC has an oddly long Wikipedia page. It’s almost as long as the page about the Watergate Complex.
It mentions trysts of Presidents Kennedy and Clinton. Presidential inaugural balls. A Nazi plot to sabotage the US that ended in betrayal. J. Edgar Hoover eating the same lunch every day: “chicken soup followed by a salad of iceberg lettuce, grapefruit, and cottage cheese. Buttered white toast was served on the side. (He brought his own diet salad dressing.)”
Hotel manager Corneal Mack is literally just a footnote. When the hotel was bought by Hilton in 1946, the Washington Post ran a story entitled “Mack To Keep Manager Post At Mayflower.”
Mack had been a hotel executive since its opening in 1925 and became a manager in 1941. With the help of his wife Helen, he was also known as a host and civic leader. He headed various trade organizations as well as the Cherry Blossom Festival, which Helen was also involved with.
Among the parties that the Macks organized at the Mayflower was a 1949 Easter breakfast where “pink and white azaleas and porcelain white Easter lilies blossomed from every corner,” according to the Washington Post. As an orchestra played, “guests took their choice of fluffy scrambled eggs and sausage, creamed chipped beef, corn-beef hash or creamed finnan haddie.”
In 1956, Mrs. Mack oversaw a Valentine’s luncheon to benefit the American Heart Association, an organization she served as the sole woman on the board of directors. The luncheon featured entertainment from Victor Borge, Rock Cornish game hens, cheese straws, wild rice, spiced peaches, string beans with almonds, chiffonade salad, and ice cream with Melba sauce and strawberries. Mrs. Mack decorated the ballroom in —what else— a heart theme including 4000 heart-shaped rolls and frosted cakes. The guest of honor was the First Lady, Mamie Eisenhower.
Articles about the events at the Mayflower mention various chefs – Nicholas Marchitelli, Anthony Macerelo, Lee Ping Quan. If Helen Mack picked up any tricks of the trade from them, they didn’t make it into any of the four recipes she contributed to 1976 “Ladies of St. Mary’s Cookbook,” stewed tomatoes, bran muffins, pumpkin bread, and this chicken casserole. Typical for the 1970s, the recipes mostly involve things in cans. As long as you have enough hot sauce, however, you kind of can’t go wrong with a chicken casserole.
Mrs. Mack was born Helen Theresa Leffingwell in Wisconsin in 1900. She came to D.C. as a teenager and worked at a public relations firm and then for Herbert Hoover. She met Corneal Mack at night classes at George Washington University. Corneal died in 1983 and Helen in 1984.
It’s easy to romanticize lives you know so little about, but I like to think of the Macks as another one of those marriages that operated as a team, like Gray and Lynn Poole.
Corneal Mack retired in 1973 and the Macks moved to Annapolis. That means they were active at the hotel for at least SOME of the intrigue and scandals. They rubbed elbows with politicians and the D.C. Elite before disappearing into the footnotes of Wikipedia. If they had any opinions about J. Edgar Hoover bringing his own salad dressing to their restaurant, they probably kept it to themselves. But I won’t. That’s just weird!
- 6 chicken breasts
- 3 Tablespoons flour
- 1 Cup sour cream
- 1 Cup mushroom soup
- .5 Lb fresh mushrooms, sliced and sauteed in butter
- 1 small can pimiento cut fine
- .5 Cup wine, Sauterne
- slivered, blanched almonds, browned in butter
- paprika
Place chicken breasts in shallow baking pan with dash of salt. Mix flour with 1/2 cup sour cream. Add salt and another 1/2 cup sour cream, the mushroom soup, fresh mushrooms, pimiento and wine. Mix well and pour over chicken. Sprinkle with paprika and almonds. Bake in 300 deg. oven about 1 1/2 hours.
Recipe from Ladies of Saint Mary’s Cook Book. Saint Mary’s Church. Annapolis. 1976.
